Passing It On

Diane Krakora

During these economic hard times, stories abound of people making a difference in their community, giving back to their social network and passing on support to the next generation. I don’t know if there are more good deeds being done now or we are so hungry for any good news that these acts of kindness are being reported more. In a way, it doesn’t matter, the awareness is being heightened. There’s the story of the chain of people paying the toll for the next car behind them, and the “free” café that serves the local homeless population fresh nutritious food (and the non-homeless who pay “what they can”) or the random man who pre-pays for the woman’s food in line at the grocery store (who can’t make the food stamps go far enough to feed her family).

I witnessed this type of selflessness this week within our channel community. The speakers at the Baptie Channel Focus event this week all passed on their knowledge, experiences and wisdom to the next generation of channel professionals. Some of the speakers were sponsors and were there selling their wares to the attendees, and some of the speakers were well respected channel leaders like Luanne Tierney of Cisco, Sheila O’Neil of Panasonic, Mike Haines with Microsoft and Stephen DiFranco from Lenovo. Talking with Maurizio Capuzzo, long time Channel Focus favorite Italian (formerly of Symbol), I discovered a giving spirit   in our channel ecosystem. Not only was he, like the rest of the speakers, willing to give two days out of the office to impart their knowledge on a relevant topic, but Maurizio also took vacation time and spent his own money to travel from New York to San Diego to participate. When my eyes twinkled with gratitude, he nonchalantly said “I enjoy passing it on”.

I am so inspired by this generous act to pass on knowledge to channel professionals, that we are dedicating our May webinar to the next generation of channel leadership. On May 14th at 11am PDT, please join me as I discuss careers in channels with four great channel chiefs:

•Allison Watson, SVP Worldwide Channels, Microsoft
•Keith Goodwin, SVP Worldwide Channels, Cisco
•Steve Houck, GM Latin America (former VP WW Channels), VMware
•Leonard Iventosch, VP Channel Sales, Isilon

Enjoy the lively discussion about their career choices, trials and joys of being a channel chief. And who knows, maybe you’ll inspired to pass on your expertise as well.

Register for Webinar